The
Second Sunday in Lent
Alongside the Community
Church of Durham
1.
So go to your Oxford Dictionary this afternoon
and you’ll find the word, “PRODIGAL,” defined in a couple of ways. Interesting ways. First, to be a prodigal person or a prodigal anything
is to be wastefully extravagant, to spend resources freely and even recklessly. PRODIGAL.
Second, to be a prodigal person or a prodigal anything is to manifest
some trait, some characteristic, some gift in a lavish way. Could be a person. Could be something quite different. Oxford gives this particularly compelling example:
“The dessert was crunchy with brown sugar and prodigal with whipped
cream.” Isn’t that lovely? You won’t remember anything about this sermon,
except for this: “The dessert was crunchy with brown sugar and prodigal with
whipped cream.” I don’t know about you;
but in my life, I aspire to that kind of ‘prodigality.’
So we all know this morning’s story, one of
Jesus’ great stories, as “The Parable of the Prodigal Son.” But, friends, isn’t it possible, maybe even
preferable, to call this story, not “The Parable of the Prodigal Son,” but “The
Parable of the Prodigal Father”?
Seriously, the father’s the one—after all this time, after years of
heartbreak—the father’s the one who freely and even recklessly forgives. The father’s the one—after all this time,
after years of pining and waiting by the back door—the one who runs to meet the
broke, broken son and wraps him in his arms and kisses and kisses and kisses
him in gratitude for his return. And a
lavish feast awaits. This is indeed “The
Parable of the Prodigal Father,” and it calls you and me, it calls every one of
us home to a community of acceptance and affirmation. Though we’re tempted to imagine the doors
locked, or the father distant, or even the house burned to the ground in the
meantime; though we’re tempted to imagine our hurts, our defeats as all there
is or ever will be—“The Parable of the Prodigal Father” is Jesus’ love song to
our broken hearts. To all broken hearts.
It's an old story, to be sure. But it’s a timely and contemporary story too. Jesus imagines religion as a feast of
reconciliation and communion, and not as a grim setup for schism and
division. Jesus imagines God as the Holy
Spirit in our hearts—who waits and watches and maybe weeps when we wander off,
when we lose track of our belovedness. Haven’t
we all—at one point or another—lost track of our belovedness? And Jesus imagines God as the Amazing Grace,
the Happy Father, the Loving Mother, who rushes out to greet us, who wraps us
in loving arms, when we return, whenever and however we return. It’s a love song, this parable, to your broken
heart, and to mine, and to every broken heart the wide, wide world around. We are meant to be at home in the world. And the doors are kept open, the candles
brightly lit, and the feast warm on the fire—by a God whose desire is our
communion. We’re sorely tempted by
despair, no doubt about that; but we are meant to be at home in the world.
In so many ways this is a parable about
alienation, about the ways we get isolated and alienated, and we wander off
into habits of hopelessness and suspiciousness.
And we can get lost in a thousand ways.
The younger son is tired of his family, exhausted maybe by his
responsibilities at home and his father’s direction. So he takes what he thinks is his, does what
so many of us do at that age, and bolts for a distant, different life in a
distant, different land. Sometimes
getting lost is about making bad mistakes.
But sometimes getting lost is a rite of passage. So many of us know the drill.
The older son gets lost much closer to
home. In fact, he doesn’t leave home at
all. But maybe it’s jealousy, maybe it’s
pride, maybe it’s just that he never much understood his brother—whatever it
is, over all those years, his heart gets hard and his capacity for empathy gets
shrunk. And by the time the father goes
out to him, goes out to encourage him, goes out to invite him into that same
wonderful, joyous feast, the older son is lost, lost in his own distant
land. A distant landscape of the spirit:
scorched by envy, suspicion and self-righteousness. Now there’s a piece of both these brothers in
every one of us, I imagine. We know
them. We’ve been them. The point of the story doesn’t seem to be
judgment or condemnation: the point Jesus is making is that wherever we are on
the journey, however alienated we’ve been, we’re invited in now. However our hearts have been broken, however
alienated we’ve been, we’re invited in now.
However much we’ve lost touch with our deepest desires, with the fire of
spirit in our souls, we’re invited in now.
The feast is all ours. A place at
the table. A community that cherishes
every one of us. The feast is all ours.
You know, Rembrandt captured this parable in an
amazing way in his 17th century painting, “The Return of the
Prodigal Son.” You can check it out
online. The painting lives in St.
Petersburg now. And Rembrandt too seems
fascinated, moved, drawn to the lavish (even reckless) welcome of the father in
Jesus’ story. The Prodigal Father. In the painting, the father gathers to his
body the disheveled, dispirited son, who’s just returned from slopping pigs in
his own distant land. And the son’s head
is buried in the father’s chest, almost in his bosom. God’s love is unconditional. God’s love is glad and welcoming. And if you look at the two hands, the two
hands wrapped around the boy’s back, you’ll notice that Rembrandt painted one
that seems like a father’s hand: kind of hairy and large. And he’s painted one that seems noticeably
different, maybe like a mother’s hand: more delicate, more refined. Art historians suspect that Rembrandt was
intentional in suggesting that divine love isn’t at all masculine or feminine,
but a dynamic interplay between the two, an integration of the many modes and
many dimensions of grace. Take a look at
the painting. It’s amazing how a great
story, or a great painting, can speak fresh truths, offer timely insight and
timely hope—though you’ve heard it, you’ve seen it a thousand times before.
3.
So if there are pieces of both brothers in all
of us, there is this too: the father’s capacity for patience, the father’s
imagination and perseverance in love.
And this is the challenge, the blessing, the appeal I want to make to
you this morning. Let that same
patience, that same persevering spirit, that same imagination be in you this
spring. The world needs you. The world needs the church. The Prodigal Church.
We’re living through a season of extraordinary
stress: the politics of white nationalism; the looming realities of climate
change; and now the Coronavirus and the unsettling reminder of how quickly
disease can spread, how vulnerable we all are to global forces beyond our
control. You know all this. We’re all living with this stress every day,
and we all feel it in our bodies and in our spirits. It plays out in our relationships and our work. We want to protect our kids, we want to
protect those we love, in every way possible.
It’s stressful out there. The
bands and bonds of community are stretched very, very, very thin.
So let’s hear the Holy Spirit this morning, friends,
speaking directly to us in just this season, at just this moment. The Holy Spirit is calling you and me—she’s
calling the church to speak truthfully and tenderly and generously to the weary
and to the worried in our midst. We are
meant to be at home in the world. We are
meant to be together, connected, partners for peace in the world.
There may be reasons for us to take precautions
with this virus. There may even be
reasons for us to keep our distance a bit, from public events, from crowded
places, maybe even (at some point) from church.
But let’s be creative and bold and imaginative and wise—in finding ways
to stay connected, in practicing a kind of persistent and prayerful care for
one another. Let’s be relentless in our
loving. Even and especially when we’re
tempted to withdraw. Even and especially
when we’re tempted to isolate ourselves and keep to ourselves. Let’s resist blame and meanness and
cynicism. Instead, let’s tune in to the
heart and the grace of the Prodigal Father—whose passion is communion, whose
desire is community, whose delight is in the ways we love and cherish and
respect one another.
So I think this remarkable parable has a very
poignant and even urgent message for us today.
If you and I are disciples of the Living Christ, if we are friends of
God in the world, then we are moved by God’s own passion. We are motivated by God’s own desire. Let’s be smart and let’s be alert to the
strategies that mitigate against illness and epidemic. But let’s be sure our hearts remain open and
tender; let’s be sure our ministries resist suspicion and despair, and reach
instead for connection and conversation and communion. Because that’s our calling. That’s our faith. That’s what God asks of us in seasons of
stress and crisis. “The Parable of the
Prodigal Father” inspires the mission, the witness, the generosity of the
Prodigal Church. And we have it in us to
be God’s friends, God’s hands and hearts, in such times as these. The Prodigal Church, indeed!
4.
It’s easy enough to see the Prodigal Father as
the image of God in the story Jesus tells this morning. But I wonder if it’s even more than
that. I wonder if God isn’t the feast
itself. Does that make any sense?
God is the One who waits, yes, and the One who
throws wide the doors for the feast, yes; but God is also the feast itself: the
communion of diverse experiences, the gathering of conflicted siblings, the
reconciling of grievances and grievance-bearers in the halls of grace and
gratitude. God is the music and the dancing,
and the bustling of cooks in the kitchen, and the excited chatter of neighbors
gathering from all over to welcome the lost boy home. God is the promise of forgiveness that makes
every conflict resolvable, that makes every wound healable; God is the promise
of forgiveness and grace that makes space for renewal in every broken heart,
and space for hope and justice in every fractured family or community.
So, yes, of course, this is “The Parable of the
Prodigal Father,” and it shines in our tradition as a sign of God’s love, even
God’s recklessness, in the name of communion and reconciliation. God aches for community. God yearns for communion. And God seeks partners—partners like you and
me—in the recklessness, in the courageousness, in the boldness that builds
beloved community: where the music is raucous and the food is luscious and the
desserts are “crunchy with brown sugar and prodigal with whipped cream.” That’s where we are today. That’s the gospel for the church this
morning. Will we join God: in that kind
of recklessness, in that kind of courageousness, in that kind of boldness? Will we welcome the broken parts of our own
souls home? Will we welcome the broken
friends and neighbors who are out there all alone home? Will we be broken and weird and wonderful and
beautiful together? Will we feast and
dance and make music in the halls of grace?
The Prodigal Church building beloved community. The Prodigal Church binding the broken. The Prodigal Church inviting the wide,
wonderful, weary world to communion.
Amen.
